It’s not every day that the White House spokesman takes aim at Texas’ GOP senators, questioning their “intellectual honesty.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest ratcheted up the Democratic push to get a vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland by calling out Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz for wanting votes on five Texas judges. The GOP has refused to set a hearing or a vote in the Senate on the Garland nomination which President Obama made six months ago after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Both Cornyn and Cruz are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“In some cases, you might actually just question the intellectual honesty of some of these senators, particularly people like Senator Cornyn and Senator Cruz that are now advocating for the confirmation of Obama-nominated justices in Texas,” Earnest said Thursday at the daily White House briefing.
“You can't have it both ways. If they're concerned about vacancies on the federal bench in Texas, how can you not be concerned about a protracted vacancy on the highest court in the land, particularly when that vacancy we know has prevented the Supreme Court from being able to reach conclusions on some pretty tough questions?
“So Republicans are playing politics with this issue in a way that's intellectually dishonest and ends up making it look even worse than most people already think they look, when you consider that Congress is pulling in the teens these days,” he said, referring to favorability ratings.
All of which brought swift responses from the Texans.
Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie said: “It’s hard for someone who as senator helped write the playbook on filibustering Supreme Court nominees to complain about people blocking his.” Obama as a senator supported a filibuster of President George W. Bush nominee Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
And from Cruz spokesman Phil Novack:
“It’s pretty rich that the White House deems itself fit to lecture about intellectual honesty. And speaking of intellectual honesty, it is hardly intellectually honest to suggest that a lower court vacancy in Texas is somehow the same as a vacancy on the highest court in the land. The American people know the difference, and they certainly know the stakes. If we allow another liberal justice on the Supreme Court, the future of the Second Amendment, religious liberty, federalism, and much more will be jeopardized, perhaps for a generation.”
Maria Recio: 202-383-6103, @maria_e_recio
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